Safe

August Film
SeriesSponsored by
the Houston Psychoanalytic Society and the Jung Center

SAFE

Commentary by
Margaret Jordan, PhDAugust 13,
2015

Let’s begin tonight’s discussion with
the question, “What is wrong with Carol White?”There are a number of ways to answer that question, and Todd Haynes, the
writer and director of this film, does not give us clear answers.At a societal level, Carol is an upper-middle
class woman whose role is restricted to decorating her home; serving her
husband, including sexually; maintaining an attractive appearance; and
participating in women’s social activities.She lives in a male-dominated environment in 1987 that seems somewhat,
but not completely, dated to us now.

On a personal level, Carol is a woman
whose life seems to have little meaning.Her relationships are shallow, and there seems to be very little
substance to her.She struggles to
articulate anything about her experience.Both her desire and her aggression are virtually absent.She begins to have panic attacks and
mysterious physical symptoms that the medical establishment can find no
explanation for.If this sounds
familiar, it may be because the descriptions I have just given are remarkably
similar to the descriptions of the female patients who figured in the origins
of psychoanalysis.

In 1895, Josef Breuer and Sigmund
Freud published Studies on Hysteria,
a series of case examples of female patients treated by them for mysterious
clusters of symptoms that did not seem to have organic origins.In the famous case of Anna O., who was
treated by Breuer until he abandoned her because of his fear of her feelings
about him, Freud began to lay out fundamental principles of psychoanalytic
theory and the “talking cure” method of psychoanalysis.The women of Studies on Hysteria were affluent women whose societal roles were
very limited, and whose experiences of sexuality were strictly confined by
Victorian-era values.Some of these
women had also been sexually abused by men in their childhoods.Breuer and Freud identified the phenomenon of
transference, the transfer of feelings for someone else, usually a parent, onto
the doctor.With the help of Anna O.,
they discovered that allowing the patient to talk about her experience, along
with interpretations of what was unconscious for her, led to healing.But they also discovered that the
relationship between the doctor and patient was essential to the therapeutic
process.

This comparison of Carol White with
Freud’s and Breuer’s early patients leaves out the part of the story of our
film tonight that has to do with environmental pollution and the issue of
chemical sensitivity.It’s certainly
true that we have allowed our earthly habitat to become contaminated with
noxious pollution.But the diagnosis of
multiple chemical sensitivity or environmental illness is not recognized as an
organic, chemically caused illness by the World Health Organization or the
American Medical Association.Patients
who have diagnosed themselves as having this illness are likely to have a
depressive, anxiety, or somatoform disorder.From a psychoanalytic perspective, we might view Carol’s experience with
pollutants as a projection of her own aggression into the air around her, which
she then feels is attacking and poisoning her.

Todd Haynes has given us a story that
raises a lot of questions and gives few answers.The first half of the film shows us how
Carol becomes increasingly desperate as she becomes increasingly ill.She turns first to her doctor, who becomes
somewhat frustrated that he can’t find a cause for her illness.He passes her off to a psychiatrist by
handing her husband the psychiatrist’s card.Unfortunately, the psychiatrist fails to grasp what is needed.He remains distant behind his desk and tells
Carol she must talk about herself without depending on him to ask
questions.She is not able to do this,
so she abandons this approach to getting help.If only she had been referred to a therapist who could have seen that
Carol needed a more active approach and the provision of a psychological
environment that had the potential for feeling safe and caring, things might
have gone very differently.

Instead, Carol pins her hopes on a
community of fellow sufferers at Wrenwood, which turns out to be a cult-like
retreat led by a charismatic leader who tells people they are to blame for
their suffering and pain and they have the power to heal themselves if they
love themselves enough.This message is
repeated in the context of what we see actually going on at Wrenwood.The leader is wealthy enough to live in a
mansion on a hilltop while the others live in basic, bare quarters.Someone dies while living at Wrenwood, and
his widow is very angry, but her anger is labeled as the cause of her illness,
not as a natural and understandable reaction to her loss and Wrenwood’s failure
to cure her husband.Another resident
was the victim of child abuse, and she is told to rid herself of her feelings
about that.

Todd Haynes has said in interviews
that one of his inspirations for writing Safe
was a book by Louise Hay called The AIDS
Book: Taking a Positive Approach, in which the author declares that AIDS is
caused by a lack of self-love, and self-love can cure it.He wanted to show the absurdity of such an
idea and its kin in New Age thinking.We
see Carol becoming sicker at Wrenwood and disappearing as she loses
weight.Julianne Moore has said that she
wanted to be as thin as possible in showing what is happening to Carol.While filming she became anorexic, lost 15
pounds, and stopped menstruating for six months.

At the end of the film we see Carol
entering the chamber where the man had died, and we can see that the same fate
is likely for her.She has been unable
to connect with anyone who might be able to develop a relationship with her
that could lead to healing, not even Chris, who seems to want that with
her.As psychoanalysts and therapists we
know that Carol desperately needs a therapeutic relationship, and she has been
unable to find one.Instead, she now
lives in a cold, hard, sterile environment and is sicker than ever.

There are many other points for
discussion that we might pursue in talking about this film, and I will close
here so that we may hear from you about your response to this movie.Thank you.